Two
steps forward, one step back. That seems to be an emerging trend for
Microsoft's
upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series platform. The snazzy user
interface, support for the XNA Framework/Silverlight/Adobe Flash
10.1, Windows Phone Marketplace, and plentiful device manufacturers
to choose from are certainly pleasing to potential buyers. However,
we're starting to learn a little bit more about the platform at MIX10
and it isn't all rosy.

Yesterday,
we learned that Windows Phone 7 Series will
not support true multitasking. Instead, the mobile operating
system will support a push notification called Microsoft Notification
Service (MNS). The MNS works almost exactly like the push
notification system currently enabled on Apple's iPhone.

"How
do you trade-off battery life at the same time? As soon as you allow
arbitrary apps to do things in the background, it can run out the
battery pretty quickly," said Microsoft's Scott Guthrie at a
MIX10 roundtable according
to Gizmodo.

In
another blow to power users -- and another feature that is present on
current Windows Mobile smartphones -- is the news that copy and paste
won't
be supported initially at launch according to Engadget.
Apple was lambasted for the lack of copy and paste on the iPhone and
it
wasn't until iPhone OS 3.0 that the feature was added to the
smartphone. It's almost inconceivable that Microsoft would choose to
show up late to the party (Q4 2010) without some semblance of copy
and paste for its flagship mobile OS.

Microsoft hasn't ruled out that copy and paste may appear in later iterations of Windows Phone 7 Series operating system, but don't hold your breath expecting to see it in time for the Holiday '10 season.

Updated
3/17/2010 @ 6:32am ESTEngadget
has confirmed that there is no copy and paste included in Windows
Phone 7 Series:

We
just super-double-ultra-plus-confirmed this with Microsoft -- Windows
Phone 7 Series will not have copy and paste functionality. There is a
data-detection service built into the text-handling API that will
recognize phone numbers and addresses, but Microsoft says most users,
including Office users, don't really need clipboard functionality.
We... respectfully disagree.

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